For the first time since Red Bull was formed in 2005, the team heads into a Grand Prix weekend with a new team principal.
On July 9, three days after the British Grand Prix, Red Bull dropped Christian Horner as team principal and chief executive. The team gave no reason for the move.
Laurent Mekies, previously team principal of Red Bull’s sister team, Racing Bulls, replaced Horner, who guided Red Bull to eight drivers’ championships, six constructors’ titles and 124 Grand Prix victories.
Horner said the decision “came as a shock,” Sky Sports F1 reported. He expressed gratitude “to each and every single member of the team that has given so much during the last 20 and a half years that I’ve been here.”
A new Red Bull era begins under Mekies at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix. He was appointed after 18 months at Racing Bulls. He worked at Ferrari for five years, as deputy team principal and racing director, and at the F.I.A., which governs Formula 1, for four years, initially as safety director and then deputy race director.
“It is impossible to underestimate the size of the achievement this team has had under 20 years of Christian’s leadership,” Mekies said in a video provided by Red Bull.
“I met him 20 years ago when he was the youngest team principal in Formula 1, and it’s unbelievable to see how he has taken this place to the level at which it is now, and on that journey, the many titles and wins.”
Mekies faces two immediate tasks. The first is to improve the performance of a team that has slipped to fourth in the constructors’ championship this season. It is 288 points behind the leader, McLaren.
He arrives as all the teams are working toward a major change in the regulations for next season. For Red Bull, which currently uses Honda engines, its task is amplified as it builds its own engines for the first time.
“Even from being a competitor previously, you look at Red Bull as being the sharpest team, accumulating the best talent to work together,” Mekies said. “They are the best at what they do.”
“We are not underestimating the challenge ahead,” he added. “It’s going to be an incredible one.”
Mekies’ second task is to retain the services of the team’s star, Max Verstappen, who has won the last four drivers’ titles.
Verstappen’s chances of five in a row are fading. At the halfway point of the season, with 12 Grands Prix remaining, he is 69 points behind Oscar Piastri of McLaren, who is eight points ahead of his teammate Lando Norris.
George Russell of Mercedes told Sky Sports F1 in June that Verstappen, who has a contract with Red Bull until 2028, had held talks with Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal.
“Mercedes want to be back on top, and to do that you need to make sure you’ve got the best drivers, the best engineers, the best pit crew, and that’s what Mercedes are chasing,” he said.
“So, it’s only normal that conversations with the likes of Verstappen are ongoing. From my side, if I’m performing as I’m doing, what have I got to be concerned about? There are two seats in every Formula 1 team.”
Wolff did not deny the comments from Russell, who wants a new deal for next season.
“Whether I like it or not, I like what George says,” Wolff said at a news conference in June. “I’m always supportive of the driver, and there is no such thing as saying things I wouldn’t want him to say.
“I think we are very transparent in what we do, what we plan, and we’ve been like that since I was put in charge. So that’s not the issue. But at the moment, clearly, you need to explore what’s happening in the future.”
Where Verstappen drives next year is “not on my mind,” he said this month. His aim is on “driving well, trying to push the performance, and then we focus on next year.”
Although he could still win the title, the battle is primarily between Piastri and Norris.
Piastri has won five Grands Prix, Norris four, including the last two in Austria and at Silverstone. It was Norris’s first British Grand Prix victory in seven attempts, providing momentum for the second half of the season.
“It’s two wins, but they’ve not come easy by any means,” Norris said at a July news conference. “We’ve had good fights, but they’re pretty strenuous, exhausting weekends because you’re fighting for hundredths and thousandths, and you’re fighting for perfection every session.
“Of course, I would love to continue that momentum, but it still requires more consistency. Two weekends don’t mean anything otherwise. I just need to keep working hard.”
Piastri was second in the last two races to make it one victory in his last six Grands Prix since his run of momentum in April and May when he won three in a row in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Miami.
“It is a very tight battle, and I think it will be for the rest of the year,” he said this month. “I expect it to ebb and flow. The weekends when we put our absolute best forward are probably enough for either of us to win.
“It’s just that doing that, finding 100 percent of your potential, instead of 99 or 99 and a half, is very, very difficult. That’s probably been the difference so far this year. We’re very evenly matched, and on our good days, either of us is very hard to beat.”
The two drivers collided in the Canadian Grand Prix in June when battling for fourth position. Norris ran into the back of Piastri late in the race. Zak Brown, the McLaren chief executive, said what happened “took the air out of the balloon.”
Brown expected the two drivers to clash again. “I think we’ll see other incidents in the near future, but they’ll be racing mistakes, and racing mistakes are going to happen,” he said.
“They’re both very clean drivers, so that’s what’s cool. You don’t feel like one’s going to run the other off the track. They’re going to fight hard again. Mistakes will happen along the way, but I think it’s going to be an epic battle down to the final race, and may the best man win.”
There will be no favoritism either. “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing, treating them equally, fairly, transparently, and with good communication,” Brown said. “If we continue to build a gap, then we want it to be up to them to decide who wins the championship if it comes down to the two of them.”
Last year, McLaren won its first constructors’ championship since 1998, and this year it is way out in front, with a 238-point lead over its nearest rival, Ferrari.
Ferrari has been a disappointment. Its only victory was in March when Lewis Hamilton won the sprint in China. The team has not won a Grand Prix, finishing on the podium only four times with Hamilton’s teammate, Charles Leclerc.
Hamilton, who joined Ferrari from Mercedes for this year, said at a news conference in July that his first half of the season was “not spectacular,” but he was “not driving that terribly.”
“I want to continue to improve,” he added. “We just continue to build, and I’m really hoping for some improvements moving forward.”
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